Surviving

I'm off politics.  Our government has failed us and there is no going back.  We now have to figure out how to survive on our own.  Having grown up very poor in the Ozarks, I have a little knowledge of this.  We had a farm, so we grew everything we ate.  Mom would make an acre garden every spring.  We picked wild dewberries, blackberries and grapes.  We canned them.  We had our own milk cows.  There were times when we did not have any milk because the cows do not give mile when they are with calf.  Dad was a hog farmer.  So every fall of the year, we butchered two hogs to get us through the winter.  We sold the rest.  Nothing on that hog went to waste.  Whatever we did not smoke or salt down, my grandmother put it into making lye soap.  Mom would order chicks in the spring.  The male chicks, when old enough, were killed and she canned the meat.  We also had fresh fish because Dad fished.  And as we got older, so did we.  Mom and Dad maybe made a monthly trip to the nearest town, 10 miles away, for coffee, flour and sometimes sugar.  Mom also bought salt and baking powder.  We had a relative that made molasses, so we used that as a sweetner.  Molasses cakes are to die for.  We also had a relative that made cornmeal.  Another savings.  So I do know a little about survival.

In this mess, we are not prepared for it.  We should have been. But we are too far removed from the Great Depression to have been lulled into a sense of nothing will ever happen on that scale.  Well it is here in the form of a virus that is destroying the economies of the world.  We have to plan for ourselves and our families how to come back from this.